I downloaded the desktop for mac and then cannot find it via id.
Only show " Find by selector’ xpath…
Based on the appium documents they recommended id not xpath, so is there a lost feature on mac desktop?
I would send the developer that link and explain why it’s important. Most developers would like their code tested.
Yeah but developers never test so they don’t know it
This is the last I’ll say on it, since I’m starting to sound like a broken record but most developers I’ve worked with are very happy to add something to aid testing. This is especially true with a debug build, which is the kind of build you have to run with Appium (because, Apple).
The product I currently work on has an additional debug menu with parameters for authenticating with production environment, shortening times between events, accessibility id’s, and more. And the reason it has all of this is because I’ve asked for it. At times I’ve had to justify the ask, but to me that’s the easy part. Everybody wants automation to work. Otherwise why did they hire me in the first place? I didn’t apply for the job of miracle worker.
A bit different story with me. I started to add ids directly into code. Developers later started also using them for internal unit tests. Later ios dev started to add ids themselves. We also added self generated ids function for all elements. All ids where generated only for debug builds and automatically removed with release build.
In general an application without proper accessibility identifiers could already be considered as incomplete. The original purpose of these identifiers is to provide people with disabilities a possibility to use your application and navigate over its UI without having major difficulties.
Also, a real story from my previous experience. Developers were working on a new feature. The feature was almost done and manual testing showed no major issues, but automated Appium tests were simply freezing as soon as the newly developed view appeared on the screen. Deeper code investigation showed the view had been constantly hogging the CPU and refreshing itself causing serious battery drain.